


Tucked Into a Corner

by Agirlmadeofcream



Category: Lego Ninjago, Ninjago - Fandom
Genre: (slightly edited ending), (so if it looks different sorry), Angst, Character Death, Completed, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Beta Read, Platonic Cuddling, Short Chapters, but dont worry cole is there to help him, but even worse at summaries apparently would you look at that, but like... not in the story? but like it happened?? idk, finally finished!!!, i love these little lego men, im bad at titles, short fic, slightly different version than the one on my tumblr blog, sorry its kinda janky this is my first actual fic, zane is not doing great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-01-15 19:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18505123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agirlmadeofcream/pseuds/Agirlmadeofcream
Summary: Zane feels as though the world has been ripped away from him when his father dies.Cole is concerned, but isn't sure of the right approach to take.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> AAAA this is my first actual fic, as little as it is :') I'm really nervous posting it because the writing feels so unsteady but I hope I can get better in time. Anyway, feel free to leave feedback as long as you plan on being respectful!

Zane wanted to be alone.

Only - no, not really, because he already was. And that was the problem, wasn’t it?

He didn’t want to be alone.

No matter how many times he told himself he did.

He wanted someone to talk to him, to listen, to make him feel better.

He wanted to feel safe.

Needed to.

Any passing feeling of comfort or rest, he grappled and pleaded for it to stay, if only for a little while. But more often than not it passed through his desperate fingers like rain through a moth-eaten umbrella.

He recalled he and his father’s countless near-identical conversations.

“It’s okay, you’re alright, you can do it. I know you can.”

“No I can’t,” Zane had responded, sometimes frustrated, other times terrified.

“Yes you can, sweetheart,” Julien would reaffirm confidently, reassuringly, and never once was he dissuaded by his son’s crumpled form or quiet sobs. “You’ve done it before. Just go somewhere nice and quiet in your head, and I promise you’ll get through it. Pretend I’m there with you, if you must.” Sometimes he’d laugh and add, “I’ll be the only parent who’s ever been lucky enough to follow their child everywhere they go.” And despite Zane’s weeping and shaking, he never left him alone. No matter what, he was never dissapointed, or angry, or condescending. At the end of everything he was always there to hold him close and soothe his anxieties.

And Zane adored him for that.

Only now he wasn’t here. So instead of taking the recently-delivered bad news with the stoic indifference he had promised himself, here he was instead - tucked into both a literal and proverbial corner.

He figured this must mean he was right all along. Despite his father’s kind words, the truth had reappeared over and over and over again: he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. He was too… weak. Burdensome. Sensitive. A billion other adjectives that clawed their way out of his subconcious and burrowed into his heart to make themselves a home.

How dissapointed must his father be? How dissapointed he must be that his lifelong passion project was so cripplingly dependent it couldn’t even stand to leave its room without him.

He thought about his father in Heaven, looking down on him in shame or concern and-

He thought about his father in Heaven, looking down on him-

He thought about his father in Heaven.

In Heaven and no longer on Earth.

He felt his chest tighten and in an instant he began to bawl.

He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

Zane hardly felt the cold wood of his dresser digging into his back as he was swept up into a riptide. He was hardly even aware of whether or not air still filled his chest, and he didn’t particularly care. He was too overwhelmed to care. Every little sound down to his own breathing made him feel like someone was holding his head under a church bell. 

He curled up as tightly as he could and balled the fabric of his sweater between his fingers, searching for some semblance of comfort in the plush feeling it gave. Before he could find any, a distant roll rumble passed through the air and the fountains in his eyes erupted in anticipation of the all-surrounding sound of thunder.

He couldn’t handle a storm right now.

He hadn’t liked them in the first place, but he especially could not bear to experience the viper-strike of lightning when the world was already crashing and burning in every direction he turned.

But storms can’t be run from, can they? They could only be waited out. Predicted and withstood.

Bitterness stained his subconcious as he thought about how unfair it was that the movement of storms thousands of miles away could be predicted when the passing of the most wonderful person in the world could not. Why had no one realized sooner that his father’s brain was not well? Why hadn’t the doctor noticed how strained his breathing, how slow his speech had become-

The first crash of thunder exploded above.

The dread Zane felt was not butterflies in his stomach, and instead was more of a scorpion, stinger raised in glee for the inevitable, or an entanglement of worms eating at his stomach as though it were a freshly-fallen apple.

Shame migrated to his cheeks as he covered his ears with his palms.

He processed another sound and instictively closed his eyes, expecting the bright flash of electricity, but when he peeked out through his fingers the only thing he saw was Cole watching him from the doorway.


	2. Chapter Two

“Should we… get him out of his room?”

Cole looked up, dimly surprised by the timidness in Kai’s voice. The brunette was usually so sure of himself, but now it seemed as though every trace of his confidence had been suspended.

No one could really blame him. It wasn’t like their situation was easy to navigate.

“I mean, shouldn’t he, like… I don’t know. Eat? Something?” Kai turned to Jay with genuine confusion. “Jay, does Zane have to eat?”

Jay’s dark eyes were helpless. “I don’t know. I mean - I do know - yeah - he does, but… I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Aren’t you supposed to be an expert?”

“Well, I can’t just reach into his metal guts and fix him this time,” Jay sputtered, hands flying wildly beside his face. “I know how to help him when he has a virus or his vision goes wanky, not when his dad has a stroke and dies!”

“Jay,” Cole growled. “Keep it down if you’re gonna say things like that.”

Jay flushed and covered his face with his fingers, as if he could silence the words that had already left his mouth. “Sorry. Sorry. I don’t think he heard me. But still sorry.”

Cole sighed and leaned back, listening to the rain pick up speed. He usually thought storms were relaxing, but right now the dark clouds only contributed to the pounding in his head.

He was supposed to be stronger than this.

He was supposed to be the leader.

He was supposed to make everyone feel better, but how could he expected to do that if he was totally in the dark? He couldn’t just drag Zane out of his room and keep him as a captive audience to his friend’s miserable attempts at cheering up (as much as he respected Jay’s effort). Nothing could… fix this. He couldn’t bring Zane’s father back from… he couldn’t bring him back. And as much as he would love to be the person he needed, he wasn’t stupid. He knew Julien couldn’t be replaced. The pair had had a beautiful relationship. They never fought, never shouted, they always held each other as close as they could. Zane has lost his father, and when he had him back it was as though the young man became a child again, in some ways. He was still as… well… Zane as ever, but he never rejected his father when he held him or kissed him on the forehead or checked in on him after a nightmare. It was like Zane had a sweet, glowing light inside of him the whole time they knew each other and his father was the only one who knew how to turn it back on.

And then Zane lost him again.

And he was ripped apart more brutally than he had ever been before.

Cole remembered the day as clearly as if he was watching it on video. It was a normal day overall, but Zane had stayed up late the night before and everyone had coaxed him into sleeping in, so Kai was the one in the kitchen. Which means Kai was the one to answer the home phone when it blared at exactly 10:16 AM. Which means Kai was the first person to get the news.

He never said it, but Cole knew from the guilt he carried in his eyes since that day that it bothered him.

Upon reception, Zane was… more confused than upset.

“What do you mean?” he asked, and other questions like it, over and over.

“But I talked to him last night.”

“Is he okay?”

“No, he’s not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t understand. Why would you say that?”

It was like Zane couldn’t comprehend what was happening around him, and looking back Cole figured it was probably shock. He had lost his father once, and losing him again was a blow to the head.

It wasn’t like Zane would have been able to say goodbye, but he said it anyways at the funeral. He cried and told his father he loved him, and when they all tried to herd him into the car to go home he shook his head and tearfully explained that he had to go to his synagogue for a while.

Obviously no one was going to deprive him of that, so they let him go.

When they finally picked him up they tried to act like they hadn’t spent two and a half hours driving through various parking lights and waiting for him in drum-tight static silence. The act ended up consisting of three parts:

One, buy everyone drinks from Zane’s favorite coffee house.

Two, buy everyone lunch from Zane’s favorite restaurant.

Three, everyone smile and stare at Zane in a probably horrifying and borderline cultish display of unconditional platonic love.

In the end, Zane spent more time trying to absorb the warmth of his cocoa than actually drinking it, and ate two french fries (as approximated by Kai at a later date).

Everybody figured he would be at his worst right after the funeral, but in the following days he’d grown more and more maudlin. And even now, he was sitting in his room, all alone with no one to talk to.

Was Cole a horrible friend?

He ran his hands through his hair and covered his face in exasperation, halfheartedly praying for a sign of what to do. When he received no obvious divine intervention, he forced himself to settle down and listen to the tell-tale rumbles of a blooming thunderstorm.

Thunderstorm.

Wait.

Cole spread his fingers and peeked through the window. Sure enough, the first flash of lightning struck the air.

Shiiiiiiiii-

“I’m gonna go check on Zane,” he announced briskly.

Kai eyed him like a restless cobra, but nodded in agreement. “Just try not to overwhelm him,” he requested, which Cole knew really meant: “You have the personality and mass of an extremely paternal Saint Bernard. Please do not squish our emotionally delicate robot friend.”

“I promise not to squish our friend.” Cole mumbled resolutely, and registered Jay glancing at him from the corner of his eye, but mostly ignored him.

He made his way down the hall and knocked once, twice, three times on the proper door. When Zane didn’t respond immediately he strongly considered turning back to the living room, having come to the hopeful conclusion that his friend had long since fallen asleep, saving himself from the stress of the storm and Cole from the deeply uncomfortable attempts at conversation that were sure to follow if the alternative was true.

Unfortunately for him, his gracious train of thought was cut short when he heard an indistinct creak.

He paused. “Zane? Can I come in?” He was pretty sure the recipient hadn’t heard him over the thunder when several seconds passed in silence, but he still added, “It’s Cole”, in the hopes that his identity would edge Zane into a sense of comfort.

It was surprise more than anything else that persuaded him to finally push open the door, when a dizzyingly loud crack of lightning filled him with a wave of urgency.

He pushed open the door and saw… well, nothing, until he looked down. Zane was curled up on the floor, tucked between the edge of his bed and his dresser.

“Hey,” Cole started cautiously.

Zane blinked up at him. “Hi.”

A pause.

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

Another pause.

“You’re sitting on the floor.”

“…Yes.”

Cole opened his mouth, closed it, started forward hesitantly, then finally sat down in front of Zane’s dresser, craning his neck to the left to look him in the face to the best of his ability.

“So what’s going on?” he asked. He had been nervous when he first came in, but he could feel himself starting to relax, his breathing coming easier and his jaw unclenching. This was where he thrived - actually talking to his friend, not sitting around and worrying about him.

Zane gave a weak shrug. “Nothing,” he replied softly.

“You sure?” Cole shifted his body around to look at him more directly. “I know you don’t like storms. This one’s pretty loud. Are you taking it okay?”

“I… yes. Yeah.”

Zane was still curled up, looking down at his feet with feigned interest, but Cole didn’t miss the shine of his cheeks. He watched him for a few more seconds, then held out his hand. Zane looked at him with uncertainty in his foggy blue eyes, so he made his request clear with the raise of an eyebrow. The blonde hesitated, but gingerly took the other man’s fingers into his hands. Cole ran his thumb gently across his knuckles, and Zane gave him the smallest, but most authentic smile he had ever seen.

The spell was broken when a spasm of thunder roared outside and Zane lurched away, hands raised defensively. Before he even knew what he was doing, Cole hushed him and pulled him carefully out from his corner. He didn’t want to overwhelm him, but he looked far too much like a pinned butterfly for Cole’s liking. In his opinion, a butterfly should be free to do as it pleased. “It’s alright,” he soothed, “it’s okay. You can come here, if you’d like.”

For a moment, Zane looked ready to bolt - fingers arched, cheeks colored, expression screwed uncomfortably tight - but all it took was Cole resting his fingers lightly on his hair and his entire form crumpled, firm silence dissolving into hiccups and wordless pleas for communion. He allowed himself to be drawn into the brunette’s embrace, and Cole allowed himself to indulge in the pleasant weight of Zane’s light form against his own. “It’s alright. Don’t be embarrassed, just let everything out.” he urged. He was well aware that the blonde was probably touch-starved beyond belief - the boy was always tactile in his affections, and Cole was both alarmed and impressed that he had gone for so long in his isolation without ever reaching out. So he gave his teammate everything he could without looking too much like an overeager admirer. He teased the fluffy tufts of blonde hair resting on his shoulder, rubbed circles on his back, and enveloped him as fully as he could.

Zane responded in full, hiding his head in Cole’s shoulder and hugging him tightly. Minutes (or hours, maybe? Neither could tell) passed, and as the storm gradually died down, Zane’s sobs quieted into careful breathing and an oversupply of “thank you”s and “sorry”s. Cole only hummed reassuringly, rocking him discreetly until he finally looked down and made eye contact with him.

Zane’s face was wet and bright, and one glance was all it took to see that he was completely exhausted. Cole pulled him closer. Poor thing, he thought, but didn’t want to make him feel as though he wasn’t being taken seriously, so he just said, “Let’s go to bed.” The android startled when Cole scooped him up, but relaxed and laughed when he was tossed playfully onto the mattress.

Cole smiled at him and sat himself down on the edge of the bed. “Do you want me to leave the door open?” he inquired, and Zane thought for a moment before shaking his head. “Okay.” he responded softly.

“I’ll let you rest, then.” But before he could even move, Zane grabbed his hand, looking nervous. Cole stiffened, and he felt his heart begin to pound. Had he been too... well... made him uncomfortable? Maybe he should have let one of the other guys in on the situation and let them handle it. He should have figured he would slip up-

“Can you stay?” Zane asked, eyes wide and nervously averted. “If you, um… if you don’t want to, that’s okay. I was just wondering.”

“Why?” Cole blurted, and Zane winced. “I- no- I didn’t mean it like that- like I don’t want to- I do, I just-” He took a breath. “I just mean, would it help you if I stayed?” Zane swallowed and nodded.

“Yes. If it is… okay. I…” he trailed off and bit his lip. “I do not like being alone at night. I get… mildly… concerned at times, is all, and it makes me… feel less concerned if someone I trust is with me.” he confessed. “And I trust you.”

Cole was still trying to process exactly what Zane had said when the blonde continued, “It is childish, is it not? I know it is. Thunderstorms and nighttime shouldn’t scare me. I think something is wrong in my coding.”

Cole frowned and leaned in closer. “There is nothing wrong with you. It’s okay to be scared of things, I promise. It isn’t your responsibility to have it together every second of every day.”

And Zane pulled him into a tight hug

Cole was sure he blacked out in surprise for a split second, but he wrapped his arms tightly around his friend in comfort.

“Thank you for staying with me,” Zane amended. Cole nodded dumbly. It was getting darker, and he could tell the blonde was getting paranoid, glancing between the door and the window.

“You should get some sleep,” Cole croaked shakily, still startled, and Zane agreed by pulling away and proceeding to tug nearly all of the blankets into his personal bubble.

Cole squinted. “Just because you’re grieving doesn’t mean you get blanket-hogging privileges.” He heard Zane laugh quietly from behind his plush colossus and tisked in response. “Horrid android, thinking you can get away with mocking my plight.” he admonished playfully, and Zane further erupted into a rare fit of giggling. Cole smiled at the sound and laid back down, feeling altogether satisfied with himself. A moment later, his eyes popped back open when he felt something press against him, and he looked down to find a large corner of the blankets sprawled onto his chest. He turned to regard his friend, but found that he had fallen soundly asleep about halfway back to his side of the bed.

His friend.

His dear, dear friend.

Cole smiled to himself.

He was alright with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS SO MUCH TO ANYONE WHO READ THIS 💖💗❣💞💝💕💟 - It was rough going, I know :’) but I think near the end I found my flow and it came out a litttle better than I expected! Please feel free to give me your thoughts and tell me whether or not you enjoyed it - all comments are super appreciated and motivate me to improve!


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